There’s an alley renaissance going on around the world. It was born of a renewed love for urbanity that came along with the droves of young, artistic types shunning the ‘burbs and repopulating North America’s inner cities. They brought with them a desire to turn what have traditionally been neglected and ugly inner-city dumping grounds into vibrant, art-adorned, pedestrian-friendly public spaces.

Vancouver, B.C. — the city that has served as a North American icon for creating liveable inner cities — is having its own “laneway” renaissance (as alleys are known here). However, in Vancouver, the revival was spawned by sky-high real estate prices, a lack of affordable housing, and an ingenious plan to create “hidden density” in the city’s most desirable single-family neighborhoods. Whereas some might see these underutilized swaths of pavement as merely needing a little beautification, the city saw it as an opportunity to provide badly-needed rental units.

Before I get into all the reasons why I love this new housing concept, first, a bit of an explanation. Laneway homes are basically miniature versions of single-family homes — in the range of 500 to 1,000 square feet — that are built in what has traditionally been the garage location of a single-family lot: in the backyard facing the lane. They can’t be subdivided or sold separately from the main house on the lot. They can only be used for additional family space or rental income. Their introduction into the frenetic Vancouver real estate scene was part of a larger “Eco-Density Initiative” invented by former mayor Sam Sullivan and championed by current mayor Gregor Robertson. The intention is to “help reduce [the city’s] carbon footprint, expand housing choices, and ensure Vancouver remains one of the most liveable cities in the world.”

Here are four reasons I love them — and hope to see other cities throughout the world adopt them as a housing option:

1. They add “hidden density” to single-family neighborhoods.

The concept of “laneway housing” is actually quite ingenious. Think about it: What other city has successfully added density to long-established, single-family neighborhoods filled with $1 million-plus homes? The very thought of it conjures up images of staunch NIMBYism. The city of Vancouver’s deft branding and effective outreach smoothed the rollout of its laneway housing bylaw, keeping NIMBY opposition to a minimum.

First of all, the city chose a good name. The term “eco-density” reminds people of the significant environmental benefits of compact communities, while neutralizing many of the concerns about noise, traffic, and the erosion of the idealized, bucolic single-family neighborhood.

Secondly, the city knew that adding density the traditional way — by “up-zoning” to allow for multi-family dwellings — was going to be a non-starter in these tony neighborhoods. In light of the great condo boom of the last two decades, the city saw the value in preserving the remaining single-family housing stock. Because no matter how much you recognize the environmental benefits of density, no one would ever want to see these beautiful, traditional neighborhoods — with their lovingly refurbished, turn-of-the-century homes and tree-lined streets — destroyed to make room for more glass-and-concrete towers.

The goal was to densify single-family neighborhoods without affecting their character; so the density needed to be relatively hidden, with no impact on the curb appeal of these long-established and highly-sought-after neighborhoods. They had already legalized basement rental suites — the most hidden form of increased density — but were bold and committed enough to ask themselves if they had actually done all they could to increase housing options in the least dense parts of the city.

Thus, laneway housing was born. The bylaw that gave birth to the concept was passed in July 2009, and less than a year later, 100 of these pint-sized backyard homes had been permitted. Today, they are becoming a relatively common sight in the back alleys of many Vancouver neighborhoods.

2. They’re ultra-green.

Since World War II, our homes have gotten successively bigger, consuming a large amount of resources to build, furnish, heat, and cool. Of course, the smaller your home, the less energy and resources it consumes. Laneway homes, by virtue of their size, are already nearly as energy-efficient as condos, and at least one builder of laneway homes is taking it a step further to see just how green these homes can be.

The firm builds exclusively with pre-fabricated, ultra-insulated panels (R-40, for you green building geeks out there). They also use small, energy-efficient appliances; triple-glazed windows; and optional solar panels, wind turbines, and rainwater collection, in order to make these green little houses even greener. The company is just now building its first “net-zero” laneway home (meaning that it will collect all of the energy it consumes via solar panels), which is loaded with the latest in energy-efficient design features.

Rendering of the net-zero laneway house.Photo: Lanefab

3. They provide a totally new housing option for those who can’t afford Vancouver’s sky-high home prices.

Most of the public conversation about laneway housing has centered on sustainability and boosting the rental housing stock. But I wondered what it was like to actually live in one of these backyard micro-homes. After all, they really are a rare type of housing: a free-standing structure the size and cost of a condo. So, I contacted Mathew Arthur, who lives in the first laneway house built in Vancouver. At the time I spoke with him, he’d been living there for over a year.

Mathew — a designer himself — appreciated the modern design of the tiny home from the moment he saw it, and knew he had to live there. “In Vancouver, if you’re a renter, you basically have two options: to live in an old house that’s been cut up into apartments and probably not very well kept up over the years, or to live in a condo, but this is completely different. It’s the same price and modern design as a new condo, but I have a whole house. There’s no one above or below me and I have direct access to the outside.” As Mathew pointed out, laneway houses allow people who can’t afford to buy (and there are many in Vancouver, with its average detached home price now above $800,000) to have their own little piece of land.

Mathew Arthur works in his laneway house.Photo: LanefabWhen I asked Mathew if it was challenging living in such a small house — which he shares with his brother, and most nights, one or both of their partners — he told me that it’s a difficult question to answer. He doesn’t feel like the space, which is just over 700 square feet, is small. “The house is
so well-designed, it makes it easy to live in a small space. Hopefully the creation of smaller housing like this will help us as a society to re-focus on good design versus just creating unnecessarily large, cookie cutter spaces.”

Good point: As our urban populations grow and densify, and urban land becomes more scarce — and the price of all the resources it takes to build and power a home continue to climb — laneway housing can indeed be a model for living well within a constrained future.

4. They’re just downright adorable.

To make this point, I’ll finish here and let the photos do the explaining. Enjoy!

A laneway home on Vancouver’s west side, as seen from the owner’s backyard.Photo: Lanefab

Interior view of the same laneway home.Photo: Venturi & Karpa

A pint-sized bedroom in the same laneway home.Photo: Venturi & Karpa

A laneway home as seen from the lane. The city requires landscaping on this side of the house.Photo: Lanefab

As a sustainability-loving transportation planner, I was thrilled to learn that Dr. Kee Yeon Hwang would be visiting Vancouver and talking about the project that has made Seoul, Korea a legend in urban planning circles: the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project.

What he and his colleagues accomplished — tearing down a busy, elevated freeway, re-daylighting the river that had been buried beneath it, and creating a spectacular downtown green space, all in under two and a half years — is nothing short of amazing, not because it actually worked (there was plenty of evidence from other cities to suggest that it could), but because they were able to get public support for it. It’s the stuff urban planners dream about — not to mention a timeline for a major freeway project that would make Seattle drool.

I went to the lecture ready to record all the juicy stats I was sure he was going to throw out: peak hour traffic flows, mode shares, level of service, lane miles. What I got instead was a story told not in numbers and data, but a story about people and the profound impact the project had on the city.

The story of the Cheonggyecheon (pronounced chung-yay-chun) started hundreds of years ago during the reign of the Joseon Dynasty, when the kingdom’s castle was considered the “head” of Seoul and the river the “body”. That was its glorious past.

By the early 20th century, as Seoul was burgeoning into the megacity of 10 million it is today, the river was bordered by a slum and used as a dumping ground, resulting in an eyesore of polluted water. As Dr. Hwang said, “sometimes it was blue, sometimes black, sometimes red.” It seemed a logical decision, then, to cover it up and build a freeway over it in the 1950s. By 1976, the four-lane elevated Cheonggyecheon Freeway — similar in form to Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct — was standing as a symbol of successful industrialization and modernization of Korea.

What followed, however, was not only traffic, pollution, and the decline of downtown Seoul — which the river and then the freeway ran through the heart of — but also decades of horrible luck that befell a succession of Korean leaders. Some were shot to death, others imprisoned for bribery. It became known as the “Cheonggyecheon Curse.”

“If the sun is blocked, bad things happen,” Dr. Hwang told us during his story, referring to the covered river.

The city left a few columns of the elevated highway that once ran over the river as a reminder.Photo: Kyle NishiokaFast-forward to 2001. As Dr. Hwang said, “some crazy people got together” and dreamed up the project. Hwang developed a traffic model to see what would happen if they took out what was considered a vital traffic artery carrying 168,000 cars per day. In the model, he included adjustments to other streets and increased transit to see if Seoul could survive without the freeway. (Is this now sounding vaguely familiar to a particular proposal regarding the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement, Seattle?)

The results of the model surprised him: not only could it work, but it would actually improve travel times in downtown Seoul.

But the model was the easy part. Getting public and political buy-in was going to be harder — not to mention that people kept telling him this was “suicide” as a transportation planner and that if the project were built it would create “gridlock!” and “traffic chaos!” (Yet another familiar refrain heard in Seattle when mention of the “Transit and Streets” proposal for replacing the Viaduct is made — not to mention other successful freeway removals in Portland, San Francisco, New York, and Milwaukee).

With a mayoral election coming up, Dr. Hwang and his “crazy” colleagues decided to shop the idea around to the candidates and found one willing to make it part of his central campaign platform: Lee Myung-bak. He ran on tearing down the elevated freeway and restoring the river — and won. There’s an ironic twist to the story at this point that made me happy to sacrifice all those stats in order to hear this fascinating tale: Lee Myung-bak had been the president of the construction company that built the freeway. Who better than he to admit it was a mistake to have been done in the first place?

It would seem ,from Dr. Hwang’s telling, that political campaigns in Korea are strikingly similar to those in North America. Now that the election was over, he didn’t expect that the new mayor would actually make good on his promise. But to the contrary, the project was announced and commenced on inauguration day. Dr. Hwang was swiftly appointed as the director of the Research Center for the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project at the Seoul Development Institute and was directed to complete what should’ve been a two-year design process in six months.

That isn’t to say that the project sailed through the public process. Far from it. In addition to the wary business owners in the corridor (if the cars were removed, the cars they were sure their business would go with it), there were 3,000 street vendors who made their living selling their wares to the people stuck in traffic. Some even threatened to kill themselves if the project went forward. Fortunately the mayor anticipated the backlash and set up a staff of public engagement personnel just as large as the design team. In the end, they were able to get enough support to begin construction, and the project was completed and opened to the public in 2005.

The results were nothing short of spectacular. The pictures tell the story better than any words can. In place of a blight-perpetrating freeway, the mayor created an astounding public amenity. A 3.6-mile linear, green river park that beautified downtown Seoul and gave its residents a spectacular setting in which to walk, splash, linger, and truly enjoy the city.

But the success story doesn’t end there, Dr. Hwang went on to discuss the several other positive externalities that resulted from the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project:

A central business district revitalization plan is now underway

Another elevated freeway in Seoul was removed and replaced with a surface street soon after

A 16-lane road in Seoul was reduced by half and a massive public plaza built with the additional space

A major street interchange in front of Seoul’s City Hall was replaced with a public plaza

An urban streams renaissance spread across the country, with citizens everywhere wanting to restore their local rivers and streams

Property values adjacent to the corridor increased by 300 percent

Species of fish, birds, and insects have increased in and around the river

The “urban heat island” effect was diminished in Seoul, with temperatures in the vicinity of the river on average 5.6 degrees F lower than surrounding areas

Oh, and there were two other “positive externalities” that resulted: Lee Myung-bak is now the president of Korea, and Dr. Kee Yeon Hwang is now the president of the Korea Transport Institute.

There is a big lesson here for Seattle and the rest of Cascadia as the region faces impending crises of diminishing funding for transportation construction and maintenance, rising fuel prices, diminishing air quality, and climate change: It can be done, and it has been done. Whether in Seoul or Portland or any of the many other cities where freeways have been removed and not replaced — if even once had the cries of “gridlock!” and “traffic chaos!” ever come to fruition, then I might not be so confident that Seattle could do it too. But as Dr. Hwang and the citizens of Seoul will tell you, crazy ideas can work — with beautiful results at that.